Esther handles her multiple attempts at suicide with a certain rationality. While there is a general lack of emotion in these chapters, we see her end goal, and how she plans on getting there. For example, during her first attempt she describes her process of trying to hang herself, however because of her houses construction, she wasn't able to find a place to hang herself. So she moves on to the next step, pulling the cord herself, however her body fights against it so she moves on to the next attempt. There is an obvious trial and error process which Esther follows, and while awful to read, it definitely seems that she is thinking through the process.
That said, is she really that rational? At the end of the day these are suicide attempts, and that isn't considered rational. Could it just be a side-effect of Esther's determination to be out of this life? Maybe not, as in a later section as she drives along a bridge, she notes that she wouldn't have jumped even if her family hadn't have been there to stop her. Like most other matters centered around Esther, its never as simple as one would think.
I was just rereading the section in which she tries to commit suicide by overdosing on her mom's pills, and I had similar thoughts. However, I think it's important to note that the question of rationality is less significant when we see that she is dealing with a mental illness that doesn't necessarily always allow her to see right from wrong. That being said, the way that her trials are narrated show that she was able to think clearly about the efficiency of her actions with her death in mind. Maybe her mind becomes a "long, blind, doorless, and windowless corridor of pain", like how she describes the feeling of childbirth under drugs.
ReplyDeleteI think Esther's rationality is in her criticism of the society she lives in. I think the suicide attempts are, despite her emotional detachment as they're happening, an irrational result of the chemical imbalance of her brain. However, her complaints about society, which lead to her feelings of loneliness and exacerbate her depression, are completely rational and intelligent.
ReplyDeleteI would disagree with these attempts being rational. I would describe them as more methodical than rational. She accepts that she is going to commit suicide and approaches it matter-of-factly, but we can see that the attempts are far from rational. Most people would know that it's not possible to strangle yourself since your body would force you to stop by going unconscious, yet Esther ignores this and tries to do so anyway.
ReplyDeleteIt's a difficult dynamic to describe, and we probably should have spent more time on it in class. I would say that the narration is relentlessly rational and reasonable in its tone and style--there are no expressions of emotional distress, despair, even "sadness" in the text--but it is relentlessly recounting and describing very nonrational behaviors and ideas. The *sentences* that calmly recount filling a teacup with ground beef and a raw egg and eating it with a spoon sound perfectly rational, and part of the uncanny effect is to grasp what's actually happening beneath this surface. So the horror is that Esther is sort of watching herself change in this way, observing her own voice coming out of her mouth, sounding monstrous, and saying stuff that she isn't even thinking.
DeleteI feel like Esther never really talks to us enough to understand the full scope and reason behind her suicide attempts. Suicide is never the answer in a situation like hers. If she had explained to anyone her motivation, she probably would have realized how silly it sounds coming out of her mouth. The problem is, there isn't anyone to tell.
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